Week commencing 9th May- The sun has arrived!

I am so happy that the good weather has arrived! It makes those cold snowy days all worth it. It’s great to see so many golfers out enjoying the weather as well. We were also happy down at the sheds due to the return of our colleague Bobby who has been off for a few months, nice to have him back!

My week started off dewing the greens on both courses and raking the bunkers. I managed to get ahead of the majority of early rising golfers. I would recommend to anyone playing in the early morning due to the wildlife you can see and hear. The cuckoos, woodpeckers, pheasant (which make the oddest noise), the geese they also make very strange noises, the odd hare and a few deer. My afternoon was mainly spent raking up branches on the Hilton.

                                                                          A Pheasant

Looks like the animals have been having a great time messing up our bunkers overnight!

Tuesday was a very varied day. I started by raking the bunkers on the Hilton taking out any debris and stones. Once I had done this I then returned to the sheds and collected a few buckets and filled them with divot sand mix and water. I then went around both courses filling the divot boxes, filling the ball washers and picking up any tee pegs. Thankfully I had the buggy otherwise someone might have had to scrape me off one of the fairways from the heat!

My job in the afternoon was to find the lost rhododendrons. Yes they had not been seen for a number of years.  Up at the medal tee for the 13^th there is an area of broom shrubs that had overgrown over time and taken over some of the rhododendrons, so I had to lop back most of the broom to expose the rhododendrons. It is now looking much better and hopefully they will come into bloom soon, go and have a look!

                                       Before                                                               After

Wednesday was an exciting day as I was shown how to drive one of the tractors, ( New Holland TN55 for any tractor geeks out there, which is unlikely). It’s easy enough but trying to reverse it with a trailer is a bit of a skill that I have not mastered yet. So if you see someone driving a blue tractor, I would suggest keeping your distance just in case! I had divot sand on the trailer and mixed it in with grass seed and filled in divots on both courses along with picking up tee pegs.

Thursday and Friday I finished divoting, raking the bunkers and changing the bins on both courses. On Friday afternoon, Tish and I were up at the clubhouse tidying up the area around it including the shoe cleaners, blowing leaves and other debris, strimming and flymoing the grass around the car park.

 Sad to see the warm weather end but I’m sure we will have a lot more sun in the summer……. Trying to be optimistic. 

If you look closely enough on the course you might see some of these tiny violets.